This is an older article dating in the late 90's but it is interesting to note that some of the same problems still exist, just in a more modern version. Firstly, contact and communication with the instructor and class, is still a contemporary issue. We think this has been solved with email, texting and skype, but if the instructor doesn't believe that as much interaction needs to be given to online students as campus ones, then it still stands as a barrier. Also, technical skills of students and faculty is listed and still true today, as well as the lack of support services.

I am pasting the appropriate portion here as the only available copy is in pdf and we don't need the entire document anyway.

"Significant Challenges
Any discussion of technology adoption must also
consider important constraints and challenges, and the
advisory board drew deeply from a careful analysis of
current events, papers, articles, and similar sources, as
well as from personal experience, in detailing a long
list of challenges higher education institutions face
in adopting any new technology. Several important
challenges are detailed below, but it was clear that
behind them all was a pervasive sense that individual
organizational constraints are likely the most important
factors in any decision to adopt - or not to adopt - a
given technology.
Even institutions that are eager to adopt new
technologies may be critically constrained by the
lack of necessary human resources and the financial
wherewithal to realize their ideas. Still others are
located within buildings that simply were not designed
to provide the radio frequency transparency that
wireless technologies require, and thus find themselves
shut out of many potential technology options. While
acknowledging that local barriers to technology
adoptions are many and significant, the advisory board
focused its discussions on challenges that are common
to the higher education community as a whole. The
highest ranked challenges they identified are listed
here, in the order in which the advisory board ranked
them.
1 Economic pressures and new models of education
are bringing unprecedented competition to the
traditional models of higher education. Across the
board, institutions are looking for ways to control costs
while still providing a high quality of service. Institutions
are challenged by the need to support a steady - or
growing - number of students with fewer resources
and staff than before. As a result, creative institutions
are developing new models to serve students, such as
streaming introductory courses over the network. As
these pressures continue, other models may emerge
that diverge from traditional ones. Simply capitalizing
on new technology, however, is not enough; the new
models must use these tools and services to engage
students on a deeper level.
2 Appropriate metrics of evaluation lag the
emergence of new scholarly forms of authoring,
publishing, and researching. Traditional approaches to
scholarly evaluation, such as citation-based metrics, are
often hard to apply to research that is disseminated or
conducted via social media. New forms of peer review
and approval, such as reader ratings, inclusion in and
mention by influential blogs, tagging, incoming links,
and re-tweeting, are arising from the natural actions of
the global community of educators, with increasingly
relevant and interesting results. These forms of scholarly
Executive Summary 5
corroboration are not yet well understood by mainstream
faculty and academic decision-makers, creating a gap
between what is possible and what is acceptable.
3 Digital media literacy continues its rise in
importance as a key skill in every discipline
and profession. Despite the widespread agreement
on the importance of digital media literacy, training in
the supporting skills and techniques is rare in teacher
education and non-existent in the preparation of most
university faculty. As lecturers and professors begin
to realize that they are limiting their students by not
helping them to develop and use digital media literacy
skills across the curriculum, the lack of formal training
is being offset through professional development or
informal learning, but we are far from seeing digital
media literacy as an expected norm for academic
professionals, nor as a key part of degree programs.
4 Institutional barriers present formidable
challenges to moving forward in a constructive
way with emerging technologies. Too often it is
education's own processes and practices that limit
broader uptake of new technologies. Much resistance
to change is simply comfort with the status quo, but in
other cases, such as in promotion and tenure reviews,
experimentation with or adoptions of clearly innovative
applications of technologies is often seen as outside the
role of researcher or scientist.
5 New modes of scholarship are presenting
significant challenges for libraries and university
collections, how scholarship is documented, and the
business models to support these activities. While the
university library has traditionally housed collections of
scholarly resources, social networks and new publishing
paradigms, such as open content, are challenging the
library's role as curator. Students and educators are
increasingly able to access important, historic research
in web browsers on devices of their choosing. As such,
libraries are under tremendous pressure to evolve new
ways of supporting and curating scholarship.
These trends and challenges are a reflection of the
impact of technology that is occurring in almost every
aspect of our lives. They are indicative of the changing
nature of the way we communicate, access information,
connect with peers and colleagues, learn, and even
socialize. Taken together, they provided the advisory
board a frame through which to consider the potential
impacts of nearly 50 emerging technologies and related
practices that were analyzed and discussed for possible
inclusion in this edition of the NMC Horizon Report series.
Six of those were chosen through successive rounds of
ranking; they are summarized below and detailed in the
main body of the report." - 2012 Horizon Report Higher Education Edition, pgs. 5-6 by New Media Consortium and Educause

This small portion of the Horizon Report discusses "Critical Challenges" of using technology as a method for delivering content to students. The four main areas that present challenges according to the New Media Consortium, the organization that publishes the Horizon Report, are: A. Digital Media Literacy: We all know it is important, the challenge is that there isn't a consensus as to what skills constitute literacy. B. Assessment lags behind as new technologies emerge quicker than committees and such can adjust curriculum accordingly. C. The traditional university instruction models are being challenged by constantly emerging technologies that offer more economic ways to deliver content so that high quality courses are still offered. D. Instructors and students must be diligent to keep pace with emerging technology, which challenges both groups' to learn and develop literacy as it quickly evolves.

This blog post states that LMS's are great when they have some good features, but there is a topping off point. When they get too fancy, the user has difficulty in navigation. There is a "sweet spot" so to speak in functionality. This blog post has an interesting reply within it for which the blog author gives a good response relating to the LMS serving as an obstacle to access course content. Learners can't get what they need quickly. This post is related to private industry, but I think still applies in the case of education.

This is a short blog post, but I liked that it confirmed some information from other articles I read about the "clunky" nature of the LMS and how this prohibits the desire to use it just when person is in a learning moment. This particular article relates to private business LMS's, but I think the point is still valid, and maybe even more so as it substantiates that this is not just an issue with education, but with people. The LMS can be a barrier to learning in general.

This article says the LMS is a barrier to learning because it is a "silo". The way to remove the barrier is to use systems like "WordPress" that have flexibility, are more seamless, and have wonderful plug-ins for gradebooks, tools to submit assignments and discussion boards. This article goes on to remark that eLearning is best when LMS is invisible, which certainly isn't the case with traditional LMS's.

In this link within a blog post, the author indicates that the LMS can be a barrier itself because some "on demand" information isn't easily plugged into the LMS. Even if you can provide a link within the LMS, it doesn't provide a seamless experience for the user.

This is a blog post from the blog link that Cory provided on my behalf, below. Thank you, Cory! It indicates that building a class from the LMS up is not the way to go. It is better to start building a course first and then select an LMS based on what suits the needs of the course. What is interesting is that many of the barriers to online learning seem to link to elements other than the LMS itself. Hmmmmmm. The perspective of the author is from private industry, but I'm not so sure that is much different that formal education.

This article reflects the theoretical views on what inhibits learning within online classes. It begins by identifying students enrolled in higher ed today as differing significantly for those considered to be "traditional" students. Students today want a "stripped down", as stated by the author, version of education. They don't want to pay for that which they won't use. Contemporary students are more interested in high quality courses that focus on learning the topic at hand, rather than the extra experiences one can attain by attending university in a traditional fashion.

One of the more interesting points regading the pedagogical element of online learning is that higher ed instructors don't take classes in how to teach students, which can make for some less than stellar instructors. And, this phenomenon is exaccerbated by technology and distance learning. In other words, those with poor classroom teaching skills are generally worse online teachers.

*This article is on the older side (2002), but I liked that it addressed distance learning as a category and highlighted general barriers to distance learning. Perhaps all problems are related to the LMS.*